Perci Jackson and the Lightining Thief
by Marshall Lee the Vamp King
Summary: Perci was a normal girl with many problems, until her pre-algebra teacher attacked her on a feild trip. Note: This is pretty close if not the exact book typed and re-written to fit. everything is gender swapped including gods. thanks for reading.
1. I Vaporize my Pre-Algebra Teacher

Look, I didn't want to be a half-blood.

If you're reading this because you think you might be one, my advice is: close this book right now. Believe whatever lie your mom or dad told you about your birth, and try to lead a normal life.

Being a half-blood is dangerous. It's scary. Most of the time, it gets you killed in painful, nasty ways.

If you're a normal kid, reading this because you think it's fiction, great. Read on. I envy you for being able to believe that none of this ever happened.

But if you recognize yourself in these pages-if you feel something stirring inside-stop reading immediately. You might be one of us. And once you know that, it's only a matter of time before they sense it too, and they'll come for you.

Don't say I didn't warn you.

My name is Perci Jackson.

I'm twelve years old. Until a few months ago, I was a boarding student at Yancy Academy, a private school for troubled kids in upstate New York.

Am I a troubled kid?

Yeah. You could say that.

I could start at any point in my short miserable life to prove it, but things really started going bad last May, when our sixth-grade class took a field trip to Manhattan- twenty-eight mental-case kids and two teachers on a yellow school bus, heading to the Metropolitan Museum of Art to look at ancient Greek and Roman stuff.

I know-it sounds like torture. Most Yancy field trips were.

But Mrs. Brunner, our Latin teacher, was leading this trip, so I had hopes.

Mrs. Brunner was this middle-aged woman in a motorized wheelchair. She had long curly hair and a frayed tweed jacket, which always smelled like coffee. You wouldn't think she'd be cool, but she told stories and jokes and let us play games in class. She also had this awesome collection of Roman armor and weapons, so she was the only teacher whose class didn't put me to sleep.

I hoped the trip would be okay. At least, I hoped that for once I wouldn't get in trouble.

Boy, was I wrong.

See, bad things happen to me on field trips. Like at my fifth-grade school, when we went to the Saratoga battlefield, I had this accident with a Revolutionary War cannon. I wasn't aiming for the school bus, but of course I got expelled anyway. And before that, at my fourth-grade school, when we took a behind-the-scenes tour of the Marine World shark pool, I sort of hit the wrong lever on the catwalk and our class took an unplanned swim. And the time before that... Well, you get the idea.

This trip, I was determined to be good.

All the way into the city, I put up with Navy Bobofit, the freckly, redheaded kleptomaniac guy, hitting my best friend Grova in the back of the head with chunks of peanut butter-and-ketchup sandwich.

Grova was an easy target. She was scrawny. She cried when she got frustrated. She must've been held back several grades, because she was the only sixth grader with acne. On top of all that, she was crippled. She had a note excusing her from PE for the rest of her life because she had some kind of muscular disease in his legs. She walked funny, like every step hurt her, but don't let that fool you. You should've seen her run when it was enchilada day in the cafeteria.

Anyway, Navy Bobofit was throwing wads of sandwich that stuck in her curly brown hair, and he knew I couldn't do anything back to him because I was already on probation. The headmaster had threatened me with death by in-school suspension if anything bad, embarrassing, or even mildly entertaining happened on this trip.

"I'm going to kill him," I mumbled.

Grova tried to calm me down. "It's okay. I like peanut butter."

She dodged another piece of Navy's lunch.

"That's it." I started to get up, but Grova pulled me back to my seat.

"You're already on probation," she reminded me. "You know who'll get blamed if anything happens."

Looking back on it, I wish I'd decked Navy Bobofit right then and there. In-school suspension would've been nothing compared to the mess I was about to get myself into.

Mrs. Brunner led the museum tour.

She rode up front in her wheelchair, guiding us through the big echoey galleries, past marble statues and glass cases full of really old black-and-orange pottery.

It blew my mind that this stuff had survived for two thousand, three thousand years.

She gathered us around a thirteen-foot-tall stone column with a big sphinx on the top, and started telling us how it was a grave marker, a stele, for a guy about our age. She told us about the carvings on the sides. I was trying to listen to what she had to say, because it was kind of interesting, but everybody around me was talking, and every time I told them to shut up, the other teacher chaperone, Mr. Dodds, would give me the evil eye.

Mr. Dodds was this little math teacher from Georgia who always wore a black leather jacket, even though he was fifty years old. He looked mean enough to ride a Harley right into your locker. He had come to Yancy halfway through the year, when our last math teacher had a nervous breakdown.

From his first day, Mr. Dodds loved Navy Bobofit and figured I was devil spawn. He would point her crooked finger at me and say, "Now, sweetie," real sweet, and I knew I was going to get after-school detention for a month.

One time, after he'd made me erase answers out of old math workbooks until midnight, I told Grova I didn't think Mr. Dodds was human. She looked at me, real serious, and said, "You're absolutely right."

Mrs. Brunner kept talking about Greek funeral art.

Finally, Navy Bobofit snickered something about the naked girl on the stele, and I turned around and said, "Will you shut up?"

It came out louder than I meant it to.

The whole group laughed. Mrs. Brunner stopped his story.

"Miss. Jackson," he said, "did you have a comment?"

My face was totally red. I said, "No, ma'am."

Mrs. Brunner pointed to one of the pictures on the stele. "Perhaps you'll tell us what this picture represents?"

I looked at the carving, and felt a flush of relief, because I actually recognized it. "That's Kronas eating her kids, right?"

"Yes," Mrs. Brunner said, obviously not satisfied. "And she did this because ..."

"Well..." I racked my brain to remember. "Kronas was the queen god, and-"

"God?" Mr. Brunner asked.

"Titan," I corrected myself. "And ... she didn't trust her kids, who were the gods. So, um, Kronas ate them, right? But her husband hid baby Zeus, and gave Kronas a rock to eat instead. And later, when Zeus grew up, he tricked his dad, Kronas, into barfing up her brothers and sisters-"

"Eeew!" said one of the girls behind me.

"-and so there was this big fight between the gods and the Titans," I continued, "and the gods won."

Some snickers from the group.

Behind me, Navy Bobofit mumbled to a friend, "Like we're going to use this in real life. Like it's going to say on our job applications, 'Please explain why Kronas ate her kids.'"

"And why, Miss. Jackson," Brunner said, "to paraphrase Mr. Bobofit's excellent question, does this matter in real life?"

"Busted," Grova muttered.

"Shut up," Navy hissed, his face even brighter red than his hair.

At least Navy got packed, too. Mrs. Brunner was the only one who ever caught his saying anything wrong. She had radar ears.

I thought about his question, and shrugged. "I don't know, ma'am."

"I see." Mrs. Brunner looked disappointed. "Well, half credit, Miss Jackson. Zeus did indeed feed Kronas a mixture of mustard and wine, which made her disgorge her other five children, who, of course, being immortal gods, had been living and growing up completely undigested in the Titan's stomach. The gods defeated their mother, sliced her to pieces with her own scythe, and scattered her remains in Tartarus, the darkest part of the Underworld. On that happy note, it's time for lunch. Mr. Dodds, would you lead us back outside?"

The class drifted off, the girls holding their stomachs, the guys pushing each other around and acting like doofuses.

Grova and I were about to follow when Mrs. Brunner said, "Miss Jackson."

I knew that was coming.

I told Grova to keep going. Then I turned toward Mrs. Brunner. "Ma'am?"

Mrs. Brunner had this look that wouldn't let you go- intense brown eyes that could've been a thousand years old and had seen everything.

"You must learn the answer to my question," Mrs. Brunner told me.

"About the Titans?"

"About real life. And how your studies apply to it."

"Oh."

"What you learn from me," she said, "is vitally important. I expect you to treat it as such. I will accept only the best from you, Perci Jackson."

I wanted to get angry, this lady pushed me so hard.

I mean, sure, it was kind of cool on tournament days, when she dressed up in a suit of Roman armor and shouted: "What ho!'" and challenged us, sword-point against chalk, to run to the board and name every Greek and Roman person who had ever lived, and their father, and what god they worshipped. But Mrs. Brunner expected me to be as good as everybody else, despite the fact that I have dyslexia and attention deficit disorder and I had never made above a C- in my life. No-she didn't expect me to be as good; she expected me to be better. And I just couldn't learn all those names and facts, much less spell them correctly.

I mumbled something about trying harder, while Mrs. Brunner took one long sad look at the stele, like he'd been at this guy's funeral.

She told me to go outside and eat my lunch.

The class gathered on the front steps of the museum, where we could watch the foot traffic along Fifth Avenue.

Overhead, a huge storm was brewing, with clouds blacker than I'd ever seen over the city. I figured maybe it was global warming or something, because the weather all across New York state had been weird since Christmas. We'd had massive snow storms, flooding, wildfires from lightning strikes. I wouldn't have been surprised if this was a hurricane blowing in.

Nobody else seemed to notice. Some of the guys were pelting pigeons with Lunchables crackers. Navy Bobofit was trying to pickpocket something from a man's pocket, and, of course, Mr. Dodds wasn't seeing a thing.

Grova and I sat on the edge of the fountain, away from the others. We thought that maybe if we did that, everybody wouldn't know we were from that school-the school for loser freaks who couldn't make it elsewhere.

"Detention?" Grova asked.

"Nah," I said. "Not from Brunner. I just wish she'd lay off me sometimes. I mean-I'm not a genius."

Grova didn't say anything for a while. Then, when I thought he was going to give me some deep philosophical comment to make me feel better, he said, "Can I have your apple?"

I didn't have much of an appetite, so I let her take it.

I watched the stream of cabs going down Fifth Avenue, and thought about my dad's apartment, only a little ways uptown from where we sat. I hadn't seen him since Christmas. I wanted so bad to jump in a taxi and head home. He'd hug me and be glad to see me, but he'd be disappointed, too. He'd send me right back to Yancy, remind me that I had to try harder, even if this was my sixth school in six years and I was probably going to be kicked out again. I wouldn't be able to stand that sad look he'd give me.

Mrs. Brunner parked his wheelchair at the base of the handicapped ramp. She ate celery while she read a paperback novel. A red umbrella stuck up from the back of her chair, making it look like a motorized cafe table.

I was about to unwrap my sandwich when Navy Bobofit appeared in front of me with his ugly friends-I guess he'd gotten tired of stealing from the tourists-and dumped his half-eaten lunch in Grova's lap.

"Oops." He grinned at me with his crooked teeth. His freckles were orange, as if somebody had spray-painted his face with liquid Cheetos.

I tried to stay cool. The school counselor had told me a million times, "Count to ten, get control of your temper." But I was so mad my mind went blank. A wave roared in my ears.

I don't remember touching her, but the next thing I knew, Navy was sitting on his butt in the fountain, screaming, "Perci pushed me!"

Mr. Dodds materialized next to us.

Some of the kids were whispering: "Did you see-"

"-the water-"

"-like it grabbed him-"

I didn't know what they were talking about. All I knew was that I was in trouble again.

As soon as Mr. Dodds was sure poor little Navy was okay, promising to get him a new shirt at the museum gift shop, etc., etc., Mr. Dodds turned on me. There was a triumphant fire in hos eyes, as if I'd done something he'd been waiting for all semester. "Now, sweetie-"

"I know," I grumbled. "A month erasing workbooks."

That wasn't the right thing to say.

"Come with me," Mr. Dodds said.

"Wait!" Grova yelped. "It was me. I pushed him."

I stared at her, stunned. I couldn't believe she was trying to cover for me. Mr. Dodds scared Grova to death.

He glared at her so hard her chin trembled.

"I don't think so, Miss Underwood," he said.

"But-"

"You-will-stay-here."

Grova looked at me desperately.

"It's okay, girl," I told him. "Thanks for trying."

"Sweetie," Mr. Dodds barked at me. "Now."

Navy Bobofit smirked.

I gave him my deluxe I'll-kill-you-later stare. Then I turned to face Mr. Dodds, but he wasn't there. He was standing at the museum entrance, way at the top of the steps, gesturing impatiently at me to come on.

How'd he get there so fast?

I have moments like that a lot, when my brain falls asleep or something, and the next thing I know I've missed something, as if a puzzle piece fell out of the universe and left me staring at the blank place behind it. The school counselor told me this was part of the ADHD, my brain misinterpreting things.

I wasn't so sure.

I went after Mr. Dodds.

Halfway up the steps, I glanced back at Grova. She was looking pale, cutting her eyes between me and Mrs. Brunner, like she wanted Mrs. Brunner to notice what was going on, but Mrs. Brunner was absorbed in his novel.

I looked back up. Mr. Dodds had disappeared again. He was now inside the building, at the end of the entrance hall.

Okay, I thought. He's going to make me buy a new shirt for Navy at the gift shop.

But apparently that wasn't the plan.

I followed him deeper into the museum. When I finally caught up to him, we were back in the Greek and Roman section.

Except for us, the gallery was empty.

Mr. Dodds stood with his arms crossed in front of a big marble frieze of the Greek gods. He was making this weird noise in his throat, like growling.

Even without the noise, I would've been nervous. It's weird being alone with a teacher, especially Mr. Dodds. Something about the way he looked at the frieze, as if he wanted to pulverize it...

"You've been giving us problems, sweetie," he said.

I did the safe thing. I said, "Yes, sir."

He tugged on the cuffs of his leather jacket. "Did you really think you would get away with it?"

The look in his eyes was beyond mad. It was evil.

He's a teacher, I thought nervously. It's not like he's going to hurt me.

I said, "I'll-I'll try harder, sir."

Thunder shook the building.

"We are not fools, Perci Jackson," Mr. Dodds said. "It was only a matter of time before we found you out. Confess, and you will suffer less pain."

I didn't know what he was talking about.

All I could think of was that the teachers must've found the illegal stash of candy I'd been selling out of my dorm room. Or maybe they'd realized I got my essay on Tom Sawyer from the Internet without ever reading the book and now they were going to take away my grade. Or worse, they were going to make me read the book.

"Well?" he demanded.

"Sir, I don't..."

"Your time is up," he hissed.

Then the weirdest thing happened. His eyes began to glow like barbecue coals. His fingers stretched, turning into talons. His jacket melted into large, leathery wings. He wasn't human. He was a shriveled hag with bat wings and claws and a mouth full of yellow fangs, and he was about to slice me to ribbons.

Then things got even stranger.

Mrs. Brunner, who'd been out in front of the museum a minute before, wheeled her chair into the doorway of the gallery, holding a pen in her hand.

"What ho, Perci!" she shouted, and tossed the pen through the air.

Mr. Dodds lunged at me.

With a yelp, I dodged and felt talons slash the air next to my ear. I snatched the ballpoint pen out of the air, but when it hit my hand, it wasn't a pen anymore. It was a sword-Mrs. Brunner's bronze sword, which she always used on tournament day.

Mr. Dodds spun toward me with a murderous look in his eyes.

My knees were jelly. My hands were shaking so bad I almost dropped the sword.

He snarled, "Die, sweetie!"

And he flew straight at me.

Absolute terror ran through my body. I did the only thing that came naturally: I swung the sword.

The metal blade hit his shoulder and passed clean through his body as if he were made of water. Hisss!

Mr. Dodds was a sand castle in a power fan. He exploded into yellow powder, vaporized on the spot, leaving nothing but the smell of sulfur and a dying screech and a chill of evil in the air, as if those two glowing red eyes were still watching me.

I was alone.

There was a ballpoint pen in my hand.

Mrs. Brunner wasn't there. Nobody was there but me.

My hands were still trembling. My lunch must've been contaminated with magic mushrooms or something.

Had I imagined the whole thing?

I went back outside.

It had started to rain.

Grova was sitting by the fountain, a museum map tented over her head. Navy Bobofit was still standing there, soaked from his swim in the fountain, grumbling to his ugly friends. When he saw me, he said, "I hope Mr. Kerr whipped your butt."

I said, "Who?"

"Our teacher. Duh!"

I blinked. We had no teacher named Mr. Kerr. I asked Navy what he was talking about.

He just rolled his eyes and turned away.

I asked Grova where Mr. Dodds was.

She said, "Who?"

But she paused first, and she wouldn't look at me, so I thought she was messing with me.

"Not funny, girl," I told her. "This is serious."

Thunder boomed overhead.

I saw Mrs. Brunner sitting under her red umbrella, reading her book, as if she'd never moved.

I went over to her.

She looked up, a little distracted. "Ah, that would be my pen. Please bring your own writing utensil in the future, Miss Jackson."

I handed Mrs. Brunner her pen. I hadn't even realized I was still holding it.

"Ma'am," I said, "where's Mr. Dodds?"

She stared at me blankly. "Who?"

"The other chaperon. Mr. Dodds. The pre-algebra teacher."

She frowned and sat forward, looking mildly concerned. "Perci, there is no Mr. Dodds on this trip. As far as I know, there has never been a Mr. Dodds at Yancy Academy. Are you feeling all right?"


	2. Three Old Men Knit the Socks of Death

I was used to the occasional weird experience, but usually they were over quickly. This twenty-four/seven hallucination was more than I could handle. For the rest of the school year, the entire campus seemed to be playing some kind of trick on me. The students acted as if they were completely and totally convinced that Mr. Kerr-a perky blond man whom I'd never seen in my life until he got on our bus at the end of the field trip-had been our pre-algebra teacher since Christmas.

Every so often I would spring a Mr. Dodds reference on somebody, just to see if I could trip them up, but they would stare at me like I was psycho.

It got so I almost believed them-Mr. Dodds had never existed.

Almost.

But Grova couldn't fool me. When I mentioned the name Dodds to her, she would hesitate, then claim he didn't exist. But I knew she was lying.

Something was going on. Something had happened at the museum.

I didn't have much time to think about it during the days, but at night, visions of Mr. Dodds with talons and leathery wings would wake me up in a cold sweat.

The freak weather continued, which didn't help my mood. One night, a thunderstorm blew out the windows in my dorm room. A few days later, the biggest tornado ever spotted in the Hudson Valley touched down only fifty miles from Yancy Academy. One of the current events we studied in social studies class was the unusual number of small planes that had gone down in sudden squalls in the Atlantic that year.

I started feeling cranky and irritable most of the time. My grades slipped from Ds to Fs. I got into more fights with Navy Bobofit and his friends. I was sent out into the hallway in almost every class.

Finally, when our English teacher, Mrs. Nicoll, asked me for the millionth time why I was too lazy to study for spelling tests, I snapped. I called her an old sot. I wasn't even sure what it meant, but it sounded good.

The headmaster sent my dad a letter the following week, making it official: I would not be invited back next year to Yancy Academy.

Fine, I told myself. Just fine.

I was homesick.

I wanted to be with my dad in our little apartment on the Upper East Side, even if I had to go to public school and put up with my obnoxious stepmother and her stupid poker parties.

And yet... there were things I'd miss at Yancy. The view of the woods out my dorm window, the Hudson River in the distance, the smell of pine trees. I'd miss Grova, who'd been a good friend, even if she was a little strange. I worried how she'd survive next year without me.

I'd miss Latin class, too-Mrs. Brunner's crazy tournament days and her faith that I could do well.

As exam week got closer, Latin was the only test I studied for. I hadn't forgotten what Mrs. Brunner had told me about this subject being life-and-death for me. I wasn't sure why, but I'd started to believe her.

The evening before my final, I got so frustrated I threw the Cambridge Guide to Greek Mythology across my dorm room. Words had started swimming off the page, circling my head, the letters doing one-eighties as if they were riding skateboards. There was no way I was going to remember the difference between Chirona and Charona, or Polydictes and Polydeuces. And conjugating those Latin verbs? Forget it.

I paced the room, feeling like ants were crawling around inside my shirt.

I remembered Mrs. Brunner's serious expression, her thousand-year-old eyes. I will accept only the best from you, Perci Jackson.

I took a deep breath. I picked up the mythology book.

I'd never asked a teacher for help before. Maybe if I talked to Mrs. Brunner, she could give me some pointers. At least I could apologize for the big fat F I was about to score on her exam. I didn't want to leave Yancy Academy with her thinking I hadn't tried.

I walked downstairs to the faculty offices. Most of them were dark and empty, but Mrs. Brunner's door was ajar, light from her window stretching across the hallway floor.

I was three steps from the door handle when I heard voices inside the office. Mrs. Brunner asked a question. A voice that was definitely Grova's said "... worried about Perci, ma'am."

I froze.

I'm not usually an eavesdropper, but I dare you to try not listening if you hear your best friend talking about you to an adult.

I inched closer.

"... alone this summer," Grova was saying. "I mean, a Kindly One in the school! Now that we know for sure, and they know too-"

"We would only make matters worse by rushing her," Mrs. Brunner said. "We need the girl to mature more."

"But she may not have time. The summer solstice deadline- "

"Will have to be resolved without her, Grova. Let her enjoy her ignorance while she still can."

"Ma'am, she saw him... ."

"Her imagination," Mrs. Brunner insisted. "The Mist over the students and staff will be enough to convince her of that."

"Ma'am, I ... I can't fail in my duties again." Grova's voice was choked with emotion. "You know what that would mean."

"You haven't failed, Grova," Mrs. Brunner said kindly. "I should have seen him for what he was. Now let's just worry about keeping Perci alive until next fall-"

The mythology book dropped out of my hand and hit the floor with a thud.

Mrs. Brunner went silent.

My heart hammering, I picked up the book and backed down the hall.

A shadow slid across the lighted glass of Brunner's office door, the shadow of something much taller than my wheelchair-bound teacher, holding something that looked suspiciously like an archer's bow.

I opened the nearest door and slipped inside.

A few seconds later I heard a slow clop-clop-clop, like muffled wood blocks, then a sound like an animal snuffling right outside my door. A large, dark shape paused in front of the glass, then moved on.

A bead of sweat trickled down my neck.

Somewhere in the hallway, Mrs. Brunner spoke. "Nothing," she murmured. "My nerves haven't been right since the winter solstice."

"Mine neither," Grova said. "But I could have sworn ..."

"Go back to the dorm," Mrs. Brunner told him. "You've got a long day of exams tomorrow."

"Don't remind me."

The lights went out in Mrs. Brunner's office.

I waited in the dark for what seemed like forever.

Finally, I slipped out into the hallway and made my way back up to the dorm.

Grova was lying on her bed, studying her Latin exam notes like she'd been there all night.

"Hey," she said, bleary-eyed. "You going to be ready for this test?"

I didn't answer.

"You look awful." She frowned. "Is everything okay?"

"Just... tired."

I turned so she couldn't read my expression, and started getting ready for bed.

I didn't understand what I'd heard downstairs. I wanted to believe I'd imagined the whole thing.

But one thing was clear: Grova and Mrs. Brunner were talking about me behind my back. They thought I was in some kind of danger.

The next afternoon, as I was leaving the three-hour Latin exam, my eyes swimming with all the Greek and Roman names I'd misspelled, Mrs. Brunner called me back inside.

For a moment, I was worried she'd found out about my eavesdropping the night before, but that didn't seem to be the problem.

"Perci," she said. "Don't be discouraged about leaving Yancy. It's ... it's for the best."

Her tone was kind, but the words still embarrassed me. Even though she was speaking quietly, the other kids finishing the test could hear. Navy Bobofit smirked at me and made sarcastic little kissing motions with his lips.  
I mumbled, "Okay, ma'am."

"I mean ..." Mrs. Brunner wheeled her chair back and forth, like she wasn't sure what to say. "This isn't the right place for you. It was only a matter of time."

My eyes stung.

Here was my favorite teacher, in front of the class, telling me I couldn't handle it. After saying he believed in me all year, now she was telling me I was destined to get kicked out.

"Right," I said, trembling.

"No, no," Mrs. Brunner said. "Oh, confound it all. What I'm trying to say ... you're not normal, Perci. That's nothing to be-"

"Thanks," I blurted. "Thanks a lot, ma'am, for reminding me.

"Perci-"

But I was already gone.

On the last day of the term, I shoved my clothes into my suitcase.

The other guys were joking around, talking about their vacation plans. One of them was going on a hiking trip to Switzerland. Another was cruising the Caribbean for a month. They were juvenile delinquents, like me, but they were rich juvenile delinquents. Their daddies were executives, or ambassadors, or celebrities. I was a nobody, from a family of nobodies.

They asked me what I'd be doing this summer and I told them I was going back to the city.

What I didn't tell them was that I'd have to get a summer job walking dogs or selling magazine subscriptions, and spend my free time worrying about where I'd go to school in the fall.

"Oh," one of the girls said. "That's cool."

They went back to their conversation as if I'd never existed.

The only person I dreaded saying good-bye to was Grova, but as it turned out, I didn't have to. She'd booked a ticket to Manhattan on the same Greyhound as I had, so there we were, together again, heading into the city.  
During the whole bus ride, Grova kept glancing nervously down the aisle, watching the other passengers. It occurred to me that she'd always acted nervous and fidgety when we left Yancy, as if she expected something bad to happen. Before, I'd always assumed she was worried about getting teased. But there was nobody to tease her on the Greyhound.

Finally I couldn't stand it anymore.

I said, "Looking for Kindly Ones?"

Grova nearly jumped out of her seat. "Wha-what do you mean?"

I confessed about eavesdropping on her and Mrs. Brunner the night before the exam.

Grova's eye twitched. "How much did you hear?"

"Oh ... not much. What's the summer solstice dead-line?"

She winced. "Look, Perci ... I was just worried for you, see? I mean, hallucinating about demon math teachers ..."

"Grova-"

"And I was telling Mrs. Brunner that maybe you were overstressed or something, because there was no such person as Mr. Dodds, and ..."

"Grova, you're a really, really bad liar."

Her ears turned pink.

From her shirt pocket, she fished out a grubby business card. "Just take this, okay? In case you need me this summer.

The card was in fancy script, which was murder on my dyslexic eyes, but I finally made out something like:

Grova Underwood

Keeper

Half-Blood Hill

Long Island, New York

(800) 009-0009

"What's Half-"

"Don't say it aloud!" she yelped. "That's my, um ... summer address."

My heart sank. Grova had a summer home. I'd never considered that her family might be as rich as the others at Yancy.

"Okay," I said glumly. "So, like, if I want to come visit your mansion."

She nodded. "Or ... or if you need me."

"Why would I need you?"

It came out harsher than I meant it to.

Grova blushed right down to her Adam's apple. "Look, Perci, the truth is, I-I kind of have to protect you."  
I stared at her.

All year long, I'd gotten in fights, keeping bullies away from her. I'd lost sleep worrying that she'd get beaten up next year without me. And here she was acting like she was the one who defended me.

"Grova," I said, "what exactly are you protecting me from?"

There was a huge grinding noise under our feet. Black smoke poured from the dashboard and the whole bus filled with a smell like rotten eggs. The driver cursed and limped the Greyhound over to the side of the highway.

After a few minutes clanking around in the engine compartment, the driver announced that we'd all have to get off. Grova and I filed outside with everybody else.

We were on a stretch of country road-no place you'd notice if you didn't break down there. On our side of the highway was nothing but maple trees and litter from passing cars. On the other side, across four lanes of asphalt shimmering with afternoon heat, was an old-fashioned fruit stand.

The stuff on sale looked really good: heaping boxes of bloodred cherries and apples, walnuts and apricots, jugs of cider in a claw-foot tub full of ice. There were no customers, just three old men sitting in rocking chairs in the shade of a maple tree, knitting the biggest pair of socks I'd ever seen.

I mean these socks were the size of sweaters, but they were clearly socks. The man on the right knitted one of them. The man on the left knitted the other. The man in the middle held an enormous basket of electric-blue yarn.  
All three men looked ancient, with pale faces wrinkled like fruit leather, silver hair, bony arms sticking out of bleached cotton sweater-vests.

The weirdest thing was, they seemed to be looking right at me.

I looked over at Grova to say something about this and saw that the blood had drained from her face. Her nose was twitching.

"Grova?" I said. "Hey, girl-"

"Tell me they're not looking at you. They are, aren't they?"

"Yeah. Weird, huh? You think those socks would fit me?"

"Not funny, Perci. Not funny at all."

The old man in the middle took out a huge pair of scissors-gold and silver, long-bladed, like shears. I heard Grova catch her breath.

"We're getting on the bus," she told me. "Come on."

"What?" I said. "It's a thousand degrees in there."

"Come on!'" She pried open the door and climbed inside, but I stayed back.

Across the road, the old guys were still watching me. The middle one cut the yarn, and I swear I could hear that snip across four lanes of traffic. His two friends balled up the electric-blue socks, leaving me wondering who they could possibly be for-Sasquatch or Godzilla.

At the rear of the bus, the driver wrenched a big chunk of smoking metal out of the engine compartment. The bus shuddered, and the engine roared back to life.

The passengers cheered.

"Darn right!" yelled the driver. He slapped the bus with her hat. "Everybody back on board!"

Once we got going, I started feeling feverish, as if I'd caught the flu.

Grova didn't look much better. She was shivering and her teeth were chattering.

"Grova?"

"Yeah?"

"What are you not telling me?"

She dabbed her forehead with her shirt sleeve. "Perci, what did you see back at the fruit stand?"

"You mean the old dudes? What is it about them, girl? They're not like ... Mr. Dodds, are they?"

Her expression was hard to read, but I got the feeling that the fruit-stand guys were something much, much worse than Mr. Dodds. She said, "Just tell me what you saw."

"The middle one took out his scissors, and he cut the yarn."

She closed her eyes and made a gesture with her fingers that might've been crossing herself, but it wasn't. It was something else, something almost-older.

She said, "You saw him snip the cord."

"Yeah. So?" But even as I said it, I knew it was a big deal.

"This is not happening," Grova mumbled. She started chewing at her thumb. "I don't want this to be like the last time."

"What last time?"

"Always sixth grade. They never get past sixth."

"Grova," I said, because she was really starting to scare me. "What are you talking about?"

"Let me walk you home from the bus station. Promise me."

This seemed like a strange request to me, but I promised he could.

"Is this like a superstition or something?" I asked.

No answer.

"Grova-that snipping of the yarn. Does that mean somebody is going to die?"

She looked at me mournfully, like she was already picking the kind of flowers I'd like best on my coffin.


	3. Grova somehow loses her pants

Confession time: I ditched Grova as soon as we got to the bus terminal.

I know, I know. It was rude. But Grova was freaking me out, looking at me like I was a dead girl, muttering "Why does this always happen?" and "Why does it always have to he sixth grade?"

Whenever he got upset, Grova's bladder acted up, so I wasn't surprised when, as soon as we got off the bus, she made me promise to wait for her, then made a beeline for the restroom. Instead of waiting, I got my suitcase, slipped outside, and caught the first taxi uptown.

"East One-hundred-and-fourth and First," I told the driver.

A word about my father, before you meet him.

His name is Sammy Jackson and he's the best person in the world, which just proves my theory that the best people have the rottenest luck. His own parents died in a plane crash when he was five, and he was raised by an aunt who didn't care much about him. He wanted to be a novelist, so he spent high school working to save enough money for a college with a good creative-writing program. Then his aunt got cancer, and he had to quit school his senior year to take care of her. After she died, he was left with no money, no family, and no diploma.

The only good break he ever got was meeting my mom.

I don't have any memories of her, just this sort of warm glow, maybe the barest trace of her smile. My dad doesn't like to talk about her because it makes him sad. He has no pictures.

See, they weren't married. He told me she was rich and important, and their relationship was a secret. Then one day, she set sail across the Atlantic on some important journey, and she never came back.  
Lost at sea, my dad told me. Not dead. Lost at sea.

He worked odd jobs, took night classes to get his high school diploma, and raised me on his own. He never complained or got mad. Not even once. But I knew I wasn't an easy kid.

Finally, he married Gigi Ugliano, who was nice the first thirty seconds we knew her, then showed her true colors as a world-class jerk. When I was young, I nicknamed her Smelly Gigi. I'm sorry, but it's the truth. The girl reeked like moldy garlic pizza wrapped in gym shorts.

Between the two of us, we made my dad's life pretty hard. The way Smelly Gigi treated him, the way she and I got along ... well, when I came home is a good example.

I walked into our little apartment, hoping my dad would be home from work. Instead, Smelly Gigi was in the living room, playing poker with her buddies. The television blared ESPN. Chips and beer cans were strewn all over the carpet.

Hardly looking up, she said around her cigarette, "So, you're home."

"Where's my dad?"

"Working," she said. "You got any cash?"

That was it. No Welcome back. Good to see you. How has your life been the last six months?

Gigi had put on weight. She looked like a hobo in thrift-store clothes. She had greasy hair on her head.

She managed the Electronics Mega-Mart in Queens, but she stayed home most of the time. I don't know why she hadn't been fired long before. She just kept on collecting paychecks, spending the money on cigarettes that made me nauseous, and on beer, of course. Always beer. Whenever I was home, she expected me to provide her gambling funds. She called that our "girl secret." Meaning, if I told my dad, she would punch my lights out.

"I don't have any cash," I told her.

She raised a greasy eyebrow.

Gigi could sniff out money like a bloodhound, which was surprising, since her own smell should've covered up everything else.

"You took a taxi from the bus station," she said. "Probably paid with a twenty. Got six, seven bucks in change. Somebody expects to live under this roof, she ought to carry her own weight. Am I right, Edith?"

Edith, the super of the apartment building, looked at me with a twinge of sympathy. "Come on, Gigi," she said. "The kid just got here."

"Am I right?" Gigi repeated.

Edith scowled into her bowl of pretzels. The other two girls passed gas in harmony.

"Fine," I said. I dug a wad of dollars out of my pocket and threw the money on the table. "I hope you lose."

"Your report card came, genious girl!" She shouted after me. "I wouldn't act so snooty!"

I slammed the door to my room, which really wasn't my room. During school months, it was Gigi's "study." She didn't study anything in there except old car magazines, but she loved shoving my stuff in the closet, leaving her muddy boots on my windowsill, and doing her best to make the place smell like her nasty perfume and cigars and stale beer.

I dropped my suitcase on the bed. Home sweet home.

Gigi's smell was almost worse than the nightmares about Mr. Dodds, or the sound of that old fruit guy's shears snipping the yarn.

But as soon as I thought that, my legs felt weak. I remembered Grova's look of panic-how she'd made me promise I wouldn't go home without her. A sudden chill rolled through me. I felt like someone-something-was looking for me right now, maybe pounding its way up the stairs, growing long, horrible talons.

Then I heard my dad's voice. "Perci?"

He opened the bedroom door, and my fears melted.

My father can make me feel good just by walking into the room. His eyes sparkle and change color in the light. His smile is as warm as a quilt. He's got a few gray streaks mixed in with his short brown hair, but I never think of him as old. When he looks at me, it's like he's seeing all the good things about me, none of the bad. I've never heard him raise him voice or say an unkind word to anyone, not even me or Gigi.

"Oh, Perci." He hugged me tight. "I can't believe it. You've grown since Christmas!"

His red-white-and-blue Sweet on America uniform smelled like the best things in the world: chocolate, licorice, and all the other stuff he sold at the candy shop in Grand Central. He'd brought me a huge bag of "free samples," the way he always did when I came home.

We sat together on the edge of the bed. While I attacked the blueberry sour strings, he ran her hand through my hair and demanded to know everything I hadn't put in my letters. He didn't mention anything about my getting expelled. He didn't seem to care about that. But was I okay? Was his little girl doing all right?

I told him he was smothering me, and to lay off and all that, but secretly, I was really, really glad to see him.

From the other room, Gigi yelled, "Hey, Sammy-how about some bean dip, huh?"

I gritted my teeth.

My dad is the nicest guy in the world. He should've been married to a millionaire, not to some jerk like Gigi.

For his sake, I tried to sound upbeat about my last days at Yancy Academy. I told him I wasn't too down about the expulsion. I'd lasted almost the whole year this time. I'd made some new friends. I'd done pretty well in Latin. And honestly, the fights hadn't been as bad as the headmaster said. I liked Yancy Academy. I really did. I put such a good spin on the year, I almost convinced myself. I started choking up, thinking about Grova and Mrs. Brunner. Even Navy Bobofit suddenly didn't seem so bad.

Until that trip to the museum ...

"What?" my dad asked. His eyes tugged at my conscience, trying to pull out the secrets. "Did something scare you?"

"No, Dad."

I felt bad lying. I wanted to tell him about Mr. Dodds and the three old dudes with the yarn, but I thought it would sound stupid.

He pursed his lips. He knew I was holding back, but he didn't push me.

"I have a surprise for you," he said. "We're going to the beach."

My eyes widened. "Montauk?"

"Three nights-same cabin."

"When?"

He smiled. "As soon as I get changed."

I couldn't believe it. My dad and I hadn't been to Montauk the last two summers, because Gigi said there wasn't enough money.

Gigi appeared in the doorway and growled, "Bean dip, Sammy? Didn't you hear me?"

I wanted to punch her, but I met my dad's eyes and I understood he was offering me a deal: be nice to Gigi for a little while. Just until he was ready to leave for Montauk. Then we would get out of here.

"I was on my way, honey," he told Gigi. "We were just talking about the trip."

Gigi's eyes got small. "The trip? You mean you were serious about that?"

"I knew it," I muttered. "She won't let us go."

"Of course she will," my dad said evenly. "Your stepmother is just worried about money. That's all. Besides," he added, "Gigi won't have to settle for bean dip. I'll make her enough seven-layer dip for the whole weekend. Guacamole. Sour cream. The works."

Gigi softened a bit. "So this money for your trip ... it comes out of your pocket, right?"

"Yes, honey," my father said.

"And you won't take my car anywhere but there and back."

"We'll be very careful."

Gigi scratched her double chin. "Maybe if you hurry with that seven-layer dip ... And maybe if the kid apologizes for interrupting my poker game."

Maybe if I kick you in your soft spot, I thought. And make you sing soprano for a week.

But my mom's eyes warned me not to make him mad.

Why did he put up with this girl? I wanted to scream. Why did he care what she thought?

"I'm sorry," I muttered. "I'm really sorry I interrupted your incredibly important poker game. Please go back to it right now."

Gigi's eyes narrowed. Her tiny brain was probably trying to detect sarcasm in my statement.

"Yeah, whatever," she decided.

He went back to his game.

"Thank you, Perci," my dad said. "Once we get to Montauk, we'll talk more about... whatever you've forgotten to tell me, okay?"

For a moment, I thought I saw anxiety in his eyes-the same fear I'd seen in Grova during the bus ride-as if my dad too felt an odd chill in the air.

But then his smile returned, and I figured I must have been mistaken. He ruffled my hair and went to make Gigi his seven-layer dip.

An hour later we were ready to leave.

Gigi took a break from her poker game long enough to watch me lug my dad's bags to the car. She kept griping and groaning about losing his cooking-and more important, his '78 Camaro-for the whole weekend.

"Not a scratch on this car, genius girl," she warned me as I loaded the last bag. "Not one little scratch."

Like I'd be the one driving. I was twelve. But that didn't matter to Gigi. If a seagull so much as pooped on her paint job, she'd find a way to blame me.

Watching her lumber back toward the apartment building, I got so mad I did something I can't explain. As Gigi reached the doorway, I made the hand gesture I'd seen Grova make on the bus, a sort of warding-off-evil gesture, a clawed hand over my heart, then a shoving movement toward Gigi. The screen door slammed shut so hard it whacked her in the butt and sent her flying up the staircase as if she'd been shot from a cannon. Maybe it was just the wind, or some freak accident with the hinges, but I didn't stay long enough to find out.

I got in the Camaro and told my dad to step on it.

Our rental cabin was on the south shore, way out at the tip of Long Island. It was a little pastel box with faded curtains, half sunken into the dunes. There was always sand in the sheets and spiders in the cabinets, and most of the time the sea was too cold to swim in.

I loved the place.

We'd been going there since I was a baby. My dad had been going even longer. He never exactly said, but I knew why the beach was special to him. It was the place where he'd met my mom.

As we got closer to Montauk, he seemed to grow younger, years of worry and work disappearing from his face. His eyes turned the color of the sea.

We got there at sunset, opened all the cabin's windows, and went through our usual cleaning routine. We walked on the beach, fed blue corn chips to the seagulls, and munched on blue jelly beans, blue saltwater taffy, and all the other free samples my dad had brought from work.

I guess I should explain the blue food.

See, Gigi had once told my dad there was no such thing. They had this fight, which seemed like a really small thing at the time. But ever since, my dad went out of her way to eat blue. He baked blue birthday cakes. He mixed blueberry smoothies. He bought blue-corn tortilla chips and brought home blue candy from the shop. This was proof that he wasn't totally suckered by Gigi. He did have a rebellious streak, like me.

When it got dark, we made a fire. We roasted hot dogs and marshmallows. Dad told me stories about when he was a kid, back before his parents died in the plane crash. He told me about the books he wanted to write someday, when he had enough money to quit the candy shop.

Eventually, I got up the nerve to ask about what was always on my mind whenever we came to Montauk-my mother. Dad's eyes went all misty. I figured he would tell me the same things he always did, but I never got tired of hearing them.

"She was kind, Perci," he said. "Tall, beautiful, and powerful. But gentle, too. You have her black hair, you know, and her green eyes."

Dad fished a blue jelly bean out of her candy bag. "I wish she could see you, Perci. She would be so proud."

I wondered how he could say that. What was so great about me? A dyslexic, hyperactive girl with a D+ report card, kicked out of school for the sixth time in six years.

"How old was I?" I asked. "I mean ... when she left?"

He watched the flames. "She was only with me for one summer, Perci. Right here at this beach. This cabin."

"But... she knew me as a baby."

"No, sweetie. She was expecting a baby, but she barely saw you. She had to leave right after you were born."

I tried to square that with the fact that I seemed to remember ... something about my mother. A warm glow. A smile.

I had always assumed she knew me as a baby. My dad had never said it outright, but still, I'd felt it must be true. Now, to be told that she'd barely even seen me ...

I felt angry at my mother. Maybe it was stupid, but I resented her for going on that ocean voyage, for not having the guts to marry my dad. She'd left us, and now we were stuck with Smelly Gigi.

"Are you going to send me away again?" I asked him. "To another boarding school?"

He pulled a marshmallow from the fire.

"I don't know, sweetie." His voice was heavy. "I think ... I think we'll have to do something."

"Because you don't want me around?" I regretted the words as soon as they were out.

My dad's eyes welled with tears. He took my hand, squeezed it tight. "Oh, Perci, no. I-I have to, sweetie. For your own good. I have to send you away."

His words reminded me of what Mrs. Brunner had said-that it was best for me to leave Yancy.

"Because I'm not normal," I said.

"You say that as if it's a bad thing, Perci. But you don't realize how important you are. I thought Yancy Academy would be far enough away. I thought you'd finally be safe."

"Safe from what?"

He met my eyes, and a flood of memories came back to me-all the weird, scary things that had ever happened to me, some of which I'd tried to forget.

During third grade, a man in a black trench coat had stalked me on the playground. When the teachers threatened to call the police, he went away growling, but no one believed me when I told them that under his broad-brimmed hat, the man only had one eye, right in the middle of his head.

Before that-a really early memory. I was in preschool, and a teacher accidentally put me down for a nap in a cot that a snake had slithered into. My dad freaked when he came to pick me up and found me playing with a limp, scaly rope I'd somehow managed to strangle to death with my meaty toddler hands.

In every single school, something creepy had happened, something unsafe, and I was forced to move.

I knew I should tell my mom about the old dudes at the fruit stand, and Mr. Dodds at the art museum, about my weird hallucination that I had sliced my math teacher into dust with a sword. But I couldn't make myself tell him. I had a strange feeling the news would end our trip to Montauk, and I didn't want that.

"I've tried to keep you as close to me as I could," my dad said. "They told me that was a mistake. But there's only one other option, Perci-the place your mother wanted to send you. And I just... I just can't stand to do it."

"My mother wanted me to go to a special school?"

"Not a school," he said softly. "A summer camp."

My head was spinning. Why would my mom-who hadn't even stayed around long enough to know me after I was born- talk to my daf about a summer camp? And if it was so important, why hadn't he ever mentioned it before?

"I'm sorry, Perci," he said, seeing the look in my eyes. "But I can't talk about it. I-I couldn't send you to that place. It might mean saying good-bye to you for good."

"For good? But if it's only a summer camp ..."

He turned toward the fire, and I knew from her expression that if I asked him any more questions he would start to cry.

That night I had a vivid dream.

It was storming on the beach, and two beautiful animals, a white horse and a golden eagle, were trying to kill each other at the edge of the surf. The eagle swooped down and slashed the horse's muzzle with its huge talons. The horse reared up and kicked at the eagles wings. As they fought, the ground rumbled, and a monstrous voice chuckled somewhere beneath the earth, goading the animals to fight harder.

I ran toward them, knowing I had to stop them from killing each other, but I was running in slow motion. I knew I would be too late. I saw the eagle dive down, its beak aimed at the horse's wide eyes, and I screamed, No!

I woke with a start.

Outside, it really was storming, the kind of storm that cracks trees and blows down houses. There was no horse or eagle on the beach, just lightning making false daylight, and twenty-foot waves pounding the dunes like artillery.

With the next thunderclap, my dad woke. He sat up, eyes wide, and said, "Hurricane."

I knew that was crazy. Long Island never sees hurricanes this early in the summer. But the ocean seemed to have forgotten. Over the roar of the wind, I heard a distant bellow, an angry, tortured sound that made my hair stand on end.

Then a much closer noise, like mallets in the sand. A desperate voice-someone yelling, pounding on our cabin door.

My father sprang out of bed and threw open the lock.

Grova stood framed in the doorway against a backdrop of pouring rain. But she wasn't... he wasn't exactly Grova.

"Searching all night," she gasped. "What were you thinking?"

My father looked at me in terror-not scared of Grova, but of why she'd come.

"Perci," he said, shouting to be heard over the rain. "What happened at school? What didn't you tell me?"

I was frozen, looking at Grova. I couldn't understand what I was seeing.

"O Zeu kai alloi theoi!" She yelled. "It's right behind me! Didn't you tell him?"

I was too shocked to register that he'd just cursed in Ancient Greek, and I'd understood him perfectly. I was too shocked to wonder how Grova had gotten here by himself in the middle of the night. Because Grova didn't have her pants on-and where her legs should be ... where her legs should be ...

My dad looked at me sternly and talked in a tone he'd never used before: "Perci. Tell me now!"

I stammered something about the old men at the fruit stand, and Mr. Dodds, and my dad stared at me, his face deathly pale in the flashes of lightning.

He grabbed his backpack, tossed me my rain jacket, and said, "Get to the car. Both of you. Go!"

Grova ran for the Camaro-but she wasn't running, exactly. She was trotting, shaking her shaggy hindquarters, and suddenly her story about a muscular disorder in her legs made sense to me. I understood how she could run so fast and still limp when she walked.

Because where her feet should be, there were no feet. There were cloven hooves.


End file.
